Does the Internet Make You Smart or Dumb?

In 2008, tech scholar Nicholas Carr sparked an earnest debate when he proclaimed in The Atlantic magazine that Google is making us stupider.

Habitually link-hopping down the rabbit hole of online information, Carr argued, has degraded our collective attention span and threatens to permanently downgrade our intelligence. Rather than reading for context and nuance, the Internet encourages us to skim for fast facts that lack substance. But Carr hasn’t spoken the last word in whether the Internet makes you smart or dumb – far from it, in fact.

countered that the search engine and the Internet is doing just the opposite

“There is no doubt that the Internet is making much more information available, instantly, in more formats to more people, thus this tool is seen as definitely enhancing the intelligence of those who are fortunate enough to be able to go online,” said Janna Anderson, director the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University.